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Hosea 13:2

Adam Clarke
Bible Commentary

And now they sin more and more - They increase in every kind of vice, having abandoned the great Inspirer of virtue.

Let the men that sacrifice kiss the calves - This was the test. If there be a Jew that pretends to sacrifice, and whose conversion is dubious, let him come openly and kiss the calves. This will show what he is; no real Jew will do this. If he be an idolater, he will not scruple. This was the ancient method of adoration.

  1. They kissed the idol.
  • When the statue was too high or too far off, they presented the hand, in token of alliance.
  • They brought that hand respectfully to their mouths, and kissed it.
  • This was the genuine act of adoration; from ad, to, and os, oris, the mouth. So Pliny, Hist. Nat., lib. xxviii., c. 1. Adorando, dexteram ad oscula referimus.

    And Apuleius, Asin., lib. iv:

    Admoventes oribus suis dexteram, ut ipsam prorsus deam religiosis adorationibus venerabantur.

    See Calmet, and see the note on Job 31:17.

    Albert Barnes
    Notes on the Whole Bible

    And now they sin more and more - Sin draws on sin. This seems to be a third stage in sin. First, under Jeroboam, was the worship of the calves. Then, under Ahab, the worship of Baal. Thirdly, the multiplying of other idols (see 2 Kings 17:9-10), penetrating and pervading the private life, even of their less wealthy people. The calves were of gold; now they “made them molten images of their silver,” perhaps plated with silver. In Egypt, the mother of idolatry, it was common to gild idols, made of wood, stone, and bronze. The idolatry, then, had become more habitual, daily, universal. These idols were made of “their silver;” they themselves had had them “molten” out of it. Avaricious as they were (see the note above 2 Kings 12:7-8), they lavished “their silver,” to make them their gods. “According to their own understanding,” they had had them formed. They employed ingenuity and invention to multiply their idols. They despised the wisdom and commands of God who forbad it. The rules for making and coloring the idols were as minute as those, which God gave for His own worship. Idolatry had its own vast system, making the visible world its god and picturing its operations, over against the worship of God its Creator. But it was all, “their own understanding:” The conception of the idol lay in its maker‘s mind. It was his own creation. He devised, what his idol should represent; how it should represent what his mind imagined; he debated with himself, rejected, chose, changed his choice, modified what he had fixed upon; all “according to his own understanding.” Their own understanding devised it; the labor of the craftsmen completed it.

    All of it the work of the craftsmen - What man could do for it, he did. But man could not breathe into his idols the breath of life; there was then no spirit, nor life, nor any effluence from any higher nature, nor any deity residing in them. From first to last it was “all” man‘s “work;” and man‘s own wisdom was its condemnation. The thing made must be inferior to its maker. made man, inferior to Himself, but lord of the earth, and all things therein; man made his idol of the things of earth, which God gave him. It too then was inferior to “its” maker, man. He then worshiped in it, the conception of his own mind, the work of his own hands.

    They say of them - Strictly, Of them, (i. e., of these things, such things, as these,) “they, say, Let the men that sacrifice kiss the calves.” The prophet gives the substance or the words of Jeroboam‘s edict, when he said, “It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem, behold thy gods, O Israel.” “Whoever would sacrifice, let him do homage to the calves.” He would have calf-worship to be the only worship of God. Error, if it is strong enough, ever persecutes the truth, unless it can corrupt it. Idol-worship was striving to extirpate the worship of God, which condemned it. Under Ahab and Jezebel, it seemed to have succeeded. Elijah complains to God in His own immediate presence; “the children of Israel have forsaken Thy covenant, thrown down Thine altars, and slain Thy prophets with the sword; and I, even I, only am left, and they seek my life, to take it away 1 Kings 19:10, 1 Kings 19:14. Kissing was an act of homage in the East, done upon the hand or the foot, the knees or shoulder. It was a token of divine honor, whether to an idol (1 Kings 19:18 and here,) or to God Psalm 2:12. It was performed, either by actually kissing the image, or when the object could not be approached, (as the moon) kissing the hand Job 31:26-27, and so sending, as it were, the kiss to it. In the Psalm, it stands as a symbol of worship, to be shown toward “the” Incarnate “Son,” when God should make Him “King upon His holy hill of Sion.”

    Matthew Henry
    Concise Bible Commentary
    While Ephraim kept up a holy fear of God, and worshipped Him in that fear, so long he was very considerable. When Ephraim forsook God, and followed idolatry, he sunk. Let the men that sacrifice kiss the calves, in token of their adoration of them, affection for them, and obedience to them; but the Lord will not give his glory to another, and therefore all that worship images shall be confounded. No solid, lasting comfort, is to be expected any where but in God. God not only took care of the Israelites in the wilderness, he put them in possession of Canaan, a good land; but worldly prosperity, when it feeds men's pride, makes them forgetful of God. Therefore the Lord would meet them in just vengeance, as the most terrible beast that inhabited their forests. Abused goodness calls for greater severity.